


Top 10 Theories That Prove Billionaire Kim Hongjoong and Superhero Champion Are Dating!

by coffeepot418



Category: ATEEZ (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Superheroes/Superpowers, Fake/Pretend Relationship, Hongjoong is a mess, Humor, M/M, Mutual Pining, Pining, Secret Identity, Superheroes, but hes fake datinig himself ok bear with me, i also need sleep ahashhahahahah, i like to think im funny—, jongho is Not hongjoongs sidekick call him that at your own risk, probably counts as crack, seonghwa causes chaos and is unapologetiic about it, yeosang needs sleep, yunho is also a mess
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-15
Updated: 2020-11-15
Packaged: 2021-03-10 06:01:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,462
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27578867
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/coffeepot418/pseuds/coffeepot418
Summary: in which hongjoong pretends to date himself to keep his identity secret and yunho fully disapproves but tries to be a supportive friend.(So this is a thing that’s happening.Some enterprising young photographer at Buzzfeed (fucking Buzzfeed. Not even, like, the Horizon Gazette, which is at least respectable) caught him in the right spot at the right time, and took a picture of Hongjoong leaving his own house in full costume. And, okay, normally this would be fine. He’d pretend to date himself and break up with himself and it would be fine.But, well.)
Relationships: Jeong Yunho/Kim Hongjoong
Comments: 16
Kudos: 117





	Top 10 Theories That Prove Billionaire Kim Hongjoong and Superhero Champion Are Dating!

**Author's Note:**

> I was awake at unholy hours last night and blacked out and woke up with this
> 
> here are my sleep-deprived-haze notes:
> 
> YES this was inspired by gotham-clickbait on tumblr. i fucking love fake gotham news headlines okay i think theyre GREAT.  
> not at my blatant parody-ing of the justice league hehe
> 
> [first post](https://gotham-clickbait.tumblr.com/post/154033801319/you-wont-believe-who-was-spotting-leaving-wayne/amp)   
>  [second post](https://gotham-clickbait.tumblr.com/post/167512975044/omg-bruce-wayne-and-batman-breakup-video-goes)
> 
> sidenote seonghwa’s name is the only one i used that i Know is actually a DC character but hes NOT meant to be that character so. yeah

“Dude,” Yunho says, dropping down next to Hongjoong on the couch.  _ “Dude.  _ How could you do this to me, man? The betrayal!”

And Hongjoong… Hongjoong nearly spits out his drink. “Huh?” He runs through everything he’s done since he saw Yunho less than 24 hours ago and concludes that nothing he did could possibly have offended him. At all. 

“Dude.” Yunho shoves his phone under Hongjoong’s nose. Hongjoong goes cross-eyed to read it, and even then the mask is a bit in his way, so he plucks the phone out of Yunho’s hand to look at the screen. And then he groans. 

_ You Won’t Believe Who Was Spotted Leaving Kim Manor Last Night! Next up: Are Billionaire Playboy Kim Hongjoong And Superhero Champion Secretly Dating? _

“You didn’t tell me you were dating!”

Hongjoong pinches the bridge of his nose. Or, well, he tries, but the cowl gets in the way. “I— Come back to me in a day and see how I feel then.” And, as he does with most conversations that involve his personal life, he stands and walks away. 

“We’re not done with this conversation!” Yunho yells after him. “Champion! Hey! Champion!”

Hongjoong’s determined to walk away, so he doesn’t see Yunho’s crestfallen expression. Maybe if he had, the following chaos wouldn’t have ensued. 

Oh well. 

“You could just tell him you’re Kim Hongjoong,” Jongho tells him, laughing. 

Hongjoong’s currently lying face down on the floor, in full costume, contemplating life. “I hate Buzzfeed,” he says, muffled into the floor of his dramatic underground cave lair. “Next time my rogues gallery attacks Buzzfeed, I’m letting it happen.”

“I believe you.” Jongho twirls his knife. “But seriously. Your crush on Ace is getting ridiculous.”

“It’s not—” Hongjoong heaves himself up off the floor just to point at him. He giggles. Brat. “—It’s  _ not _ a crush.”

“It’s a crush.” Jongho jumps out of the way of a (very cleverly named, shut up Jongho) champ-a-rang. “Champion and Aaaaaaace sitting in a tree—”

Hongjoong leaps at him, but Jongho’s fast, and he’s up in the rafters before Hongjoong can land a hit. (“Why do you have rafters? It’s a cave,” Yunho will ask, later, upon visiting for the first time. And Hongjoong will respond, ignoring a once more giggling Jongho in the background, “It’s for the aesthetic.”)

So this is a thing that’s happening. 

Some enterprising young photographer at Buzzfeed (fucking Buzzfeed. Not even, like, the Horizon Gazette, which is at least respectable) caught him in the right spot at the right time, and took a fucking _ picture _ of Hongjoong leaving  _ his own house _ in  _ full costume. _ And, okay, normally this would be fine. This would be absolutely  _ fine. _ He’d pretend to date himself and break up with himself and it would be  _ fine. _ He has a  _ reputation,  _ okay. It’d be absolutely fine if he did that. But. But!

Ace. 

Hongjoong knows Ace’s real name—Jeong Yunho—because Ace doesn’t really care if any of the Goodness Guild know his secret identity. Hongjoong, on the other hand—or Champion, as the others know him—cares a lot. 

Like, a lot a lot. 

Probably an unhealthy amount. Jongho says it’s unhealthy. But Jongho also thinks Hongjoong should be doing, like, more exercise on top of the exercise he already does, and Hongjoong’s whole life is essentially patrol and sparring, so honestly Hongjoong will take any of Jongho’s opinions with a grain of salt. 

Anyway. Look. He was one of the first “superheroes” to pop up, and he’s spent most of his career alone. The Goodness Guild is a fairly recent development. He knows he can trust them, but at the same time he doesn’t really  _ know. _

He’s working on it. 

And, before anyone says anything, Jongho’s special. Jongho’s Jongho. Jongho knew Hongjoong before Hongjoong was Champion. Jongho isn’t part of the Goodness Guild because he spends most of his time being an anti-hero. It’s a whole thing. Their backstory isn’t important. (“You forgot, didn’t you.” “No! I didn’t! I just can’t be bothered to talk about the entire naming process behind your superhero identity because it hurts my head to think about.”)

Jongho’s also named Appleman and there’s really no way Hongjoong can keep secrets from someone named Appleman. Imagine he comes up to you, and you’re  _ expecting _ the giant apple (not the company) logo on his chest, but then you  _ see _ the giant apple (not the company) logo on his chest, and then you’re on the ground wheezing with laughter even though you were expecting it. So you can’t even fight back because you’re in hysterics, because who the fuck chooses an apple (not the company) as their  _ thing?  _ Appleman, apparently. Hongjoong gets that every hero has their  _ thing. _ He respects that. But. Apples. Apples??

Back to his main point. He’d be entirely comfortable faking selfcest if he was on his own. Even Jongho’s teasing is bearable. But. 

Yunho doesn’t know who he is. 

_ Yunho doesn’t know who he is.  _

Which means Hongjoong is getting an  _ unholy _ amount of shit from him for breaking the bro code, or whatever. 

“Hasn’t he dated, like, fifteen people in ten days, or something? I feel like that’s a record.”

That was a crazy week that Hongjoong actually doesn’t regret. “Are you slut shaming?”

Yunho backpedals so quickly it’s almost funny. “No, no! I’m just saying. You’re you, one of the most famous superheroes, known for doing good, and he’s… the kind of guy that double books a date and shows up for neither and the two original dates find out and end up having revenge dates with each other.”

Okay, in his defense, he’d done that on purpose. They both separately refused to leave him alone even though they were  _ clearly _ head over heels for each other. He’d just given them a little incentive. Little did they know… well. It was good for his bad reputation. “People make mistakes.”

“This is a laundry list of mistakes,” Yunho says. 

Hm. Yeah. Hongjoong doesn’t particularly want him going through all of those. “This is why I don’t tell you things.” 

He regrets it right after he says it, when Yunho has to mask his expression. Because Hongjoong saw the hurt before he managed to cover it. 

“I’m—”

“No, you’re right,” Yunho says. “I finally know something about you and I just… shittalk your boyfriend. Sorry. I’ll, um. I’ll see you around?”

“Yeah,” Hongjoong says, watching helplessly as he walks away. He desperately wants to yell,  _ it’s fake! I just don’t want you digging up weird shit I used to do!  _ But nooo. He has to “maintain his secret identity”. Granted, that’s a self-imposed restriction. Still! 

He’ll make sure the cafeteria’s stocked with Yunho’s favorite snacks later. Hopefully the weirdness won’t last.

The weirdness gets worse. 

_ “Ten reasons Champ-joong is the city of Horizon’s new OTP,” _ Yunho says, popping up out of nowhere as Hongjoong’s fixing the… thing. Something. He narrowly stops himself from jumping. “Aww, this is so cute.”

Hongjoong resists the urge to facepalm. “Um. Thanks, I guess,” he says. He supposes this is better than Yunho walking him through every televised moment of regret in his life. But only marginally. It’s just that Yunho did an entire unexpected 180, Hongjoong almost has whiplash. 

“There are entire twitter accounts dedicated to you two now!” Yunho says enthusiastically, clearly following them as he speaks. 

“Cool,” Hongjoong says, when he really wants to say,  _ why is this happening to me?? _

“His wikipedia page says he appears in, like, a lot of reality shows. I’m gonna go watch them. Is that cool with you?” 

“Yeah,” Hongjoong says, dying inside. “Cool.”

And so Yunho wanders off to watch every reality show Hongjoong’s appeared in since he was a baby. 

Hongjoong deeply regrets existing. 

“I liked the one with the Waynes,” Yunho tells him, while they’re on monitor duty together as their teammates fight the villain of the week. “Especially when he and the… the third kid? Jumped through the skylight. That was great.” 

“I—he was fifteen,” Hongjoong says. Why is this coming up now? They’re working. They shouldn’t be talking about Hongjoong’s regrettable life choices while they’re working. 

“Still,” Yunho says with great enthusiasm. Hongjoong has a bad feeling about this. “It was awesome.”

“It cost, like, a lot of money in damages.”

And now Yunho looks worried. “Oh, does he not like talking about that? Sorry, if it’s a sore subject—”

“No, no,” Hongjoong hastens to say. “He doesn’t mind.”

“Oh, okay, good.” Yunho relaxes. “That’s good.”

Hongjoong sighs. 

He should catch up with Tim Wayne, though. They lost touch when Tim disappeared to do some soul searching. The unscripted skylight damage may have lightened Bruce Wayne’s wallet by about a million USD, and Hongjoong  _ might  _ not exactly be welcome back, but Tim had been cool. Yeah. He’ll send him a message. 

_ “Fifteen times Kim Hongjoong ran away from paparazzi,” _ Yunho recites, following Hongjoong as he walks in the most convoluted paths through their HQ to get to his various destinations in the hopes of losing Yunho somewhere along the way. “Dude, your boyfriend’s parkour is sick.”

Hongjoong’s going to strangle him. He’s  _ going to strangle him. _ Crush be damned. 

Not that he has a crush. 

Also, why does it sound like he’s stopped doing this to make Hongjoong feel better and now  _ actually _ enjoys following Playboy-Kim-Hongjoong’s exploits in the tabloids?

“Are you going to keep reading clickbait at me?” Hongjoong grunts, finally arriving at the main computer room. 

“Yeah, I mean. You’re one of my best friends. But I know  _ nothing _ about your personal life. This is cool! I’m glad you’re finally being more open about things. And I was wrong to judge, before.”

Hongjoong’s strangely touched and surprisingly doesn’t feel the strong urge to power walk away from this mildly emotional conversation. “Um. Thanks. You’re one of my best friends too.” 

Yunho beams at him. Hongjoong wants to cover his face in kisses.  _ No. Bad thought, _ he scolds himself.  _ No kissing thoughts. _

_ But want kiss. _

_ No. _

Hongjoong groans, and ignores Yunho when he asks what’s wrong.

He’s going to go insane. 

Yunho visits him, in Horizon, at some point. Ostensibly to check in, but he’s seen Hongjoong with more frequency lately than he has ever in the past. Mostly because Hongjoong’s aiming to escape people who hound Champion for information on their ‘relationship’, and HQ is a good place for that. At least he has a high tolerance level for Yunho badgering him about it, compared to that for a stranger. 

Jongho stops by, when he hears Yunho’s around. Mostly because they’ve never met and he wants to meet the person Hongjoong spends so much time lying face down on the ground about.

“Oh hey!” Yunho beams. “You’re Champion’s sidekick!”

Hongjoong watches, with unbridled glee, as Jongho’s entire face spasms, jaw ticking in repressed rage. “Haha, sure,” he says, teeth gritted. “Sidekick.”

Yunho moves on, chattering about how pretty the skyline looks, and Hongjoong preens at Jongho behind his back.  _ Sidekick, _ Hongjoong mouths, absolutely delighted. Jongho schools the murder behind a bland expression by the time Yunho turns back around. Or maybe he’s just hiding it in his covered eyebrows. Entirely possible. 

Hongjoong waits a while to go home that night, unwilling to risk getting ambushed by a very angry Appleman.

By the tenth time Yunho comes to him to excitedly detail something  _ Hongjoong himself did, _ such as the time two days ago he stopped to pet a dog, or the time last week he helped an elderly lady cross a road, or, god forbid, the time eleven years ago he pranked his caretaker Eden by wrapping his entire car in plastic wrap, Hongjoong’s had enough. 

“Please don’t tell me you run a fan blog,” he says, squinting at him. 

The expression on Yunho’s face gives him the foreboding suspicion that he’ll soon be nursing a headache. “Uh.”

“You do.” 

“Uh.”

_ “Yunho.” _

“It’s cute!” Yunho says, and for the first time his smile falters a bit. “I’m sorry, is it… Is it too much?”

And. Yeah. It’s too much. It’s a lot and Hongjoong isn’t used to the attention—especially from Yunho—and it stings a little every time Yunho—his _crush—_ coos over his _fake relationship with himself._ But Yunho’s _trying_ to be supportive, despite his initial feelings, and he just looks so… Hongjoong doesn’t kick puppies. “It’s fine,” he promises, smiling in what’s hopefully a reassuring way. “Just… maybe tone it down? Just a little?”

“Okay,” Yunho says, and then he’s beaming again, and Hongjoong’s pressing a hand to his own chest like it’ll calm his fluttering heart. 

And of course, from there, things go south. 

“You’ve got to be  _ kidding  _ me,” Hongjoong says, when he wakes up in civvies tied to a pole above a vat of bubbling liquid. 

“I thought it was a nice threat,” his captor says, filing his nails at a table in the corner. He’s all dressed up for a dramatic entrance, too. “I couldn’t get the sharks imported in time, so I had to make do with what I had.”

“Seonghwa,” Hongjoong says, exasperated. He’s willing to put aside the shark comment for later discussion, given the circumstances. “You  _ know _ I can’t save myself. What are you  _ doing?” _

Park Seonghwa, the not-so-recent complication to his secret identity. 

You see, when you grow up with a person, it’s very easy to recognize their eccentricities. Even—no, especially—if said eccentricity is dressing up in a dramatic costume and illegally fighting crime. Or, in Seonghwa’s case, causing it. 

They’d been raised in the same social circles. Both scions of wealthy households. Both a little weirder than their peers. So, naturally, they became enemies. Friends. Frienemies. Leaning towards enemy. Friendly enemies? 

It was only natural that they’d graduate from the schoolyard to the battlefield. (“You’re being dramatic.” “Shut  _ up _ Jongho.”)

“Your pining was getting pathetic,” Seonghwa—Catman, rather, since he’s in costume—tells him. “I decided to help you.”

“Getting pathetic?” Hongjoong splutters. “Help me  _ what?” _

“I sent a ransom note to Champion’s business email. Your Goodness Guild friends have access, don’t they? They’ll be over to help in a minute.” Seonghwa grins at him. “Be the damsel in distress you know you want to be in the deep recesses of your heart.”

Hongjoong is going to  _ kill _ him when he gets out of these ropes, personal code be damned. 

He tells him as much, but Seonghwa only laughs at him. “I’d like to see you try.”

A few more minutes go by, with only the sloshing ominous liquid below him for entertainment. Hongjoong wonders, if he whines enough, would Seonghwa let him go or let him drop?

He’s saved from making that gamble by, lo and behold, Yunho, swooping in with his immaculately perfect hair and immaculately perfect face and immaculately perfect disappointed expression. “Catman!” He begins, clearly ready to make a grand speech about honor and dignity, or whatever, but Seonghwa giggles and swoons and that clearly catches him off guard. 

“Oh no!” Seonghwa says. “You caught me! Oops. Guess I have to run away now!” And then the lights flicker (thing 1 or thing 2’s doing, probably. Where Seonghwa goes Woosan follow) and then he’s gone. 

Yunho blinks, at a loss. 

“Um,” Hongjoong says, wiggling. “Help?”

“Oh!” Yunho startles and hurries to untie him, carrying him carefully to safety. Hongjoong about melts in his arms. What does he need to do to be bridal carried around by him at all times? 

“Thanks,” Hongjoong says sheepishly. 

“Of course! Just doing my job!” Yunho says. He frowns. “But shouldn’t… shouldn’t your, uh, boyfriend…? Shouldn’t he have rescued you? What’s taking him so long?”

Yeah. Fuck personal codes. Hongjoong’s going to  _ kill Seonghwa so hard. _ “He’s probably stopping crime elsewhere, haha. Catman’s not especially dangerous, I’m sure he knows that.”

“Sure,” Yunho says, frowning. But it’s clear he’s not buying it. 

“Can I break up with myself yet?” Hongjoong demands, slamming open the door to his PR manager’s office. The third and final person who knows his secret identity, only because Jongho convinced him—rightly—that without someone to manage him, he’d give it away in about a day. 

Yeosang blinks up at him tiredly and hands him a cup. “No.”

Hongjoong groans louder. Then he sips the coffee and quietly gives thanks to Yeosang, benevolent god, who knows his coffee order, knows Hongjoong enough to know when he’ll stop by, and loves him enough to get him one. 

“Wooyoung says your date with Ace went well.”

Hongjoong points the coffee at him as he backs out the room, using his hip to open the door. “Not a date. Tell Wooyoung that next time I see Seonghwa I  _ will _ slam dunk him into the nearest trash can.”

“You can try,” Yeosang tells him. “He’s pretty strong.” 

Hongjoong narrows his eyes. Oh? “How do  _ you _ know that.”

“We’re friends,” Yeosang says, shrugging. “He’s cool.” 

“Is he trying to appropriate my entire social circle?” Hongjoong whines. “First San, now you. Soon enough he’ll be trying to take Jongho, too.”

Yeosang remains suspiciously quiet. 

“Yeosang,” Hongjoong says distrustfully. “Is Jongho friends with him?”

Yeosang gives him a bland look. “You’ll have to ask Jongho that.”

Traitors. All of them. Except Yunho. Yunho’s the only thing good in this world. Hongjoong makes a mental note to tell Jongho this when he gets home. Maybe not the Yunho thing, because that’ll just subject him to more teasing, but definitely the traitor thing. Hmph.

Yunho’s been suspiciously quiet about Champ-joong for the past few days. 

“He’s thinking through a few things,” Mingi says when Hongjoong asks about it. “He’d tell you if it was important.”

To be fair, he’s had to save Hongjoong from Seonghwa  _ several times  _ after the first time. Hongjoong tried to convince Jongho to save him instead, but the traitor just laughed at him. “I can’t be seen rescuing the city’s darling,” he said. “I’m an  _ anti _ hero, hyung.”

So Hongjoong’s slightly worried Yunho thinks he doesn’t care about himself enough to rescue himself. Which is reasonable! If Hongjoong had no context and his friend’s boyfriend kept being kidnapped and his friend the superhero consistently did nothing to stop it, he’d also be sort of concerned. But. He can’t save himself. 

Seonghwa was a boy scout. The motherfucker’s knots are  _ good. _

But, well, the silence on Yunho’s end gave Hongjoong a bit of time to think. And he’s pretty much come to a decision. 

“Hey,” Yunho says one day, popping his head into a conference room. “You got a minute?”

“Sure,” Hongjoong says. He has a feeling he knows what this is about. 

“So,” Yunho says. He shifts, uncomfortable. “You, uh, you know your boyfriend’s getting kidnapped a lot, right?

“Sure,” Hongjoong says. “Thanks for rescuing… him.”

“Um. Are you not. Worried?”

Hongjoong shrugs. “Not really?”

“Is that… healthy?”

Hongjoong doesn’t really have the time or patience or mental stability to even attempt explaining his and Seonghwa’s relationship to someone that isn’t Yeosang. “Yyyyyes?”

Yunho frowns at him. 

Hongjoong sighs. 

This is going to go on if he doesn’t do it now. He  _ knows _ this is going to go on if he doesn’t do it now. 

“I’m going to tell you something,” Hongjoong says. 

“Okay?”

Hongjoong sighs again. Better to show, right? 

He pulls off the cowl. 

Yunho blinks at him. He rubs his eyes, too, bless him. “Oh,” he manages. _“Oh.”_

“Yeah.” Hongjoong pulls the cowl back on. “So. Not dating.”

“Not dating,” Yunho repeats. “Right.” His cheeks go red with realization. “Sorry about what I said before,” he squeaks. “I didn’t mean to slut shame you—!”

Hongjoong smiles at him, pats his head. “It’s okay. You were looking out for me. Both me's, now. I thought it was cute.”

“Um.” Yunho just gets redder. “Cute…? So you’re… not dating?”

“Nope.” Hongjoong pops the p. “Unless you’d like to go get dinner with me. Then I’d be dating.” It's been a weird week. This might just happen. He's not dying inside at all, no.

“Oh,” Yunho says, delighted. _ “Oh.” _ He nods, so enthusiastically his mask nearly falls off, despite the spirit gum holding it in place. “Yeah, I’m free tonight?”

“I know,” Hongjoong says, because they’d just had a Goodness Guild meeting cancel for tonight. “I just need to do one thing first…” 

Yeosang’s gonna be  _ so _ mad at him. But that’s a problem for future-Hongjoong.

The headlines the next day all boast the same quote. “OMG Kim Hongjoong and Champion Breakup Video Goes Viral. ‘He really is great in bed,’ a frustrated Hongjoong rants, ‘But he’d never take off that damn cowl.’”

Yunho wakes Hongjoong up with his giggles. “Hyung,” he wheezes, slapping a pillow in mirth. “You’ll never believe what Buzzfeed’s saying now.”

**Author's Note:**

> this is not at all a throwback to when i used to write young justice fanfiction on fanfiction.net okay <3 birdflash was my Shit


End file.
